> It seemed so much more difficult and unpleasant to deal with.

In my experience it’s much easier and much more pleasant do deal with. Every VLAN is a /64 exactly. Subnetting? Just increment on a nibble boundary. Every character can be split 16 ways. It’s trivial.

You don’t even need to use a subnet calculator for v6, because you can literally do that in your head.

Network of 2a06:a003:1234:5678::555a:bcd7/64? Easy - the first 4 octets.

Network of 10.254.158.58/27? Your cheapest shotgun and one shell please.